The End of This Blog

After I returned to the U.S. from Russia, I struggled to figure out how to continue this blog. While I wanted to continue to explore Russian food, I felt it would be difficult to commit to writing a blog about food from a country I no longer lived in.  I started a few different blogs but have had trouble keeping up with any of them.  I hope to start something new soon.

Uzbek Food in Russia

Central Asian food is remarkably easy to find and quite popular in Russia. Many fast-food stands sell Central Asian foods like somsa (meat-filled pastries) and are usually run by Central Asian immigrants. There are also sit-down restaurants serving Central Asian food, some of them run by Central Asians themselves but most run by ethnic Russians.

The most common Central Asian cuisine in Russia is Uzbek, and most Russians are familiar with Uzbek foods like somsa, manti (dumplings filled with beef or mutton), and palov (rice pilaf with carrots, onions, beef or mutton, and sometimes chickpeas, raisins, and garlic cloves).

I recently had the opportunity to eat at several sit-down restaurants featuring Uzbek cuisine. The first took me by surprise. In the picture above, you can see this restaurant's two menus: one featuring Japanese food, the other with Uzbek food. The waitresses did not seem to consider this a strange combination and simply laughed when I asked why both were served. The atmosphere of this restaurant was definitively Japanese, but the menu featured a number of Uzbek dishes I have been unable to find elsewhere. Although they did not offer pumpkin manti, they did serve xonum and tuxum barak. Xonum (below left) is a roulette of steamed dough similar to manti. My host mom in Uzbekistan used to make xonum with pumpkin for me, but here my husband enjoyed some with beef and onions inside. Tuxum barak (below right) is a traditional dish in the western Khorezm region of Uzbekistan. Ravioli are filled with raw eggs and then boiled and eaten with sour cream, kefir, or qatiq.

Other Uzbek restaurants are focused exclusively on Central Asian food (usually with some Caucasian and Russian dishes mixed in). These restaurants tend to be relatively fancy and to aim to provide an "exotic" experience. Most offer hookahs for smoking flavored tobacco, and some feature bellydancers. Nearly all are designed with elaborate interior decorations such as draping curtains, plush pillows and benchs to sit on rather than firm chairs, and traditional Uzbek-style blue or green dishes. Some even offer guests the opportunity to sit on korpucha (futon-like cushions) on the floor and eat at traditional Central Asian low tables.

Khachapuri (Georgian Cheese Pie)

As a vegetarian, one of my mainstays in Russia has been khachapuri. Although khachapuri is a Georgian dish, it is extremely popular throughout Russia and can be found at both roadside food stands and in fancy restaurants.

Authentic Georgian khachapuri is a little like a pizza or the Turkish pide. Even within Georgia there is some variation, but khachapuri is typically a round of leavened bread filled like a pizza (or in some cases like a calzone, with bread on top) with a mound of mouth-watering cheese. Some Georgian versions also include melted butter and/or a raw egg. All are served hot so that the cheese is stringy and soft.

In Russia, there are even more versions of this delicacy. It seems that Russians and other ethnic groups have adopted the idea of khachapuri but modified it to fit their desires. For example, although traditional khachapuri is about the size of a plate, most khachapuri sold at roadside food stands is smaller: about the size of the somsa or pirozhki sold along side it. Oftentimes it is filled with a variety of cheeses, sometimes the slightly sweet tvorog.

At Central Asian food stands that specialize in somsa (meat-filled Central Asian pastries), khachapuri is sometimes made with unleavened, flaky dough so that it is similar to a somsa. While on a trip to Yaroslavl, I even had khachapuri with cheese and mayonnaise!

Qovoqli Manti

When I lived in Uzbekistan, my host mom used to make me delicious homemade qovoqli honum (is this the correct spelling??), which is a steamed, rolled dumpling filled with pumpkin. I recently had the chance to eat at an Uzbek restaurant in Tatarstan and was excited to see that they served qovoqli manti, pumpkin-filled dumplings that are similar to honum.

These qovoqli manti were delicious and tasted very authentic, minus the chunks of beef fat I sometimes found in pumpkin manti in Uzbekistan. I am used to eating manti and honum with qatiq (a type of plain yogurt) on top. Here they were served with an herb yogurt, which was also delicious.

In addition to manti, we had Uzbek flatbread and black tea that the server poured into a teacup and back into the pot three times, as is a tradition in Uzbekistan. The food was served on traditional blue-and-while Uzbek china, and in the background there was Uzbek music playing. All of this made me miss Uzbekistan and my friends there!